PESHAWAR: Masked gunmen kidnapped a six-member polio vaccination team -- a doctor, two local employees of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and three guards -- in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) on Monday, an official said.

Monday February 24, 2014, 12:06 pm
Local administration official Niamat Ullah Khan said the team was seized some 300 kilometres southwest of Peshawar, in Ping village at the border of South Waziristan.

A local official of the WHO in Peshawar confirmed the incident.

The kidnapping is the latest setback to efforts to eradicate the disease in the country, and followed a bombing on Sunday targeting a polio team in Peshawar which killed a policeman.

Peshawar is considered “the largest polio virus reservoir of the world” by the WHO.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping so far. But militant groups see vaccination campaigns as a cover for espionage, and there are also long-running rumours about polio drops causing infertility.

More than 40 people, including health workers and police guarding the teams which administer polio drops to children, have been killed in Pakistan since December 2012.

A new campaign around Peshawar, which started early this month, will continue until April.

It sees teams go door-to-door every Sunday across the city to administer vaccinations to children for various diseases including polio, tuberculosis, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and hepatitis.

According to the WHO, Pakistan recorded 91 cases of polio last year, up from 58 in 2012. Victims are left dead, paralysed or with withered limbs.

Monday February 24, 2014, 4:58 pm
I do hope that this group are OK and will be released unharmed.

As for those who do not want the polio vaccine, it is their choice, you cannot help those who refuse to be helped. I am sorry for the children but the boys will grow up to be like their fathers and the girls will grow up to be abused by their fathers/brothers/uncles or sold to paedophiles etc so they are on a hiding to nothing either way.

Monday February 24, 2014, 5:32 pm
How about we leave these people to the witch doctors...in time, after many deaths, lots of maiming, maybe, just maybe, these people will start using their brains again...

Monday February 24, 2014, 10:36 pm
Ignorance, fear and propaganda is a powerful mix which will inevitably lead to serious consequences.

I hope that the team are o.k. and will be released unharmed soon. I guess any education campaign about viruses and vaccines would likely be viewed, by those that oppose such programs, as propaganda.... It is terribly sad that such ignorant beliefs will have dire consequences for children.

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 4:30 am
There is little outcry from the international community against these kidnappings and against the killing of 40 brave people who died trying to preventing children from catching dreadful diseases. Only inoculating all children in the pockets where these diseases still thrive makes it possible to eradicate diseases like polio from this planet like they eradicated the pox.

That having been said, eradication and making sure that no children can be crippled by it in the future also depends on other religious fractions giving up their resistance to inoculation. In Australia the government has ruled that all children must be inoculated against polio - religious reasons not being enough to oppose it - but in my own country we have small outbreaks of polio in the bible belt because the government doesn't dare to overrule their religious opposition.

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 6:14 am
There are some crazy Westerners and cults who also are endangering their children by refusing proven modern medicine treatments, but their total numbers are small in comparison with Muslims who are following evil medieval ideology of Islam, which is unsuitable for human consumption. Read Koran to see how memorization of those hateful verses is child abuse by itself, not to mention condoning pedophilia, polygamy and "honor" murder (www.cspipublishing.com/pdfs/ATwoHourKoran.pdf Children under Islam live in fear, especially girls!

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 2:55 pm
This has to do with Islamic scholars, being expert immunologists, issuing a series of fatwas both for and against polio vaccination. Pakistani clerics issued a fatwa in support of vaccination, in the hope of encouraging Muslims to a have their children vaccinated. Unfortunately competing fatwas were issued to warn parents of the American plot to sterilise Muslim children. The negative impact in Pakistan was relatively mild, but a similar anti-vaccination fatwas in Nigeria led to a resurgence of what would otherwise be an easily preventable condition. The real reason why muslims are becoming increasingly sterile has more to do with the habit of first cousins marrying than vaccinations. But then religious groups and rational thinking are not high on the agenda with inbred groups especially when they have guns.

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 4:18 pm
That's interesting, Louise. I had not heard about competing/opposite fatwas or an American plot to sterilize Muslim children. Do you have any info on that?

I do know that when previously traditional and largely not well-educated populations, whether Muslim or otherwise, come into contact with modernity and the education that is needed to get ahead, the populations decline precipitously. This "sterilizing effect of modernity" or so called “death spiral” has happened within the Muslim world in places like Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, in fact at a rate much faster than the world’s average (Source: United National World Population Division).

In fact, both Achmadinejad and Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan have both been demonstrably upset about these statistics and to where they are leading demographically. Erdogan knows that if the population trend is not reversed soon, that ethnic Kurds will be in the numerical majority, which is viewed as a threat to Turkey’s Turkish identity.

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 4:52 pm
Perhaps the West should stop helping people who don't want to be helped. There's something about Gov't doing nothing for their people while much of the aid money given to Gov't finding it's way to Swiss and Cayman Is. banks that bothers me.

Tuesday February 25, 2014, 9:08 pm
These kidnappers are nothing but low-life cowards. The children should not be punished for the sins of their fathers and they need these vaccinations. And the disease has to be stopped where it breeds because in this global world, disease can travel.

People, the governments who order, employ and pay people to do this do it because there are manifold dangers in not having the population immunized against polio. It's terrible suffering for the children and the disease spreads quickly. On humane grounds the vaccine teams have to at least try it.

It also makes the country a vector for an almost-eradicated, controllable disease, which is a modern-day embarrassment to the government. It's an admission that bizarre religious conspiracy theories win out over truth and rationality, that the people are so backwards that it belies the claim of Pakistan as a modern democracy (as well as for other reasons).

What does a government do when faced with this? I would imagine that since the kidnapping and murder of these health workers has been going on for some time now, at least have the army accompany them.

However, that sets an already violently-inclined population siding with the Taliban to further exacerbate tensions with the government, something I'm sure the government doesn't want.

"and they need these vaccinations. And the disease has to be stopped where it breeds because in this global world, disease can travel."

This is really an important point. I heard a radio program discussing this issue about polio. I was vaccinated against polio as a child, as I imagine most other Americans have been and probably most children in the world are. The question was raised whether these vaccines would actually protect us so many years later if a wave of polio were to hit Western countries from intransigent Muslim ones.

There seemed to be quite a bit of doubt, and this is quite worrying. Perhaps there are recommendations from the CDC and/or WHO as to whether adults should be re-vaccinated.

Thursday February 27, 2014, 12:42 am
“According to the WHO, Pakistan recorded 91 cases of polio last year, up from 58 in 2012. Victims are left dead, paralysed or with withered limbs.”

My Grandfather’s first wife, the love of his life, was stricken with Polio either during a pregnancy or shortly after a miscarriage. She was bedridden for around ten years of her life before passing.

The experience was very spiritually trying for both of them. My grandfather almost became a Catholic priest before meeting Tilly (this is her nickname).

My Grandfather ended up having an illegitimate daughter with another woman before Tilly passed. He raised the daughter, Dotty, along with Tilly’s surviving child, Jerry.

Then, when Tilly passed, he met my grandmother. After their marriage, my grandmother insisted in Dotty’s removal from his (and her) house. Having illegitimate children in the old Catholic faith was very taboo. My Grandfather put nine-year-old Dotty in a Catholic convent and she ended up becoming a nun.

My grandmother’s children always saw an extremely serious old man. They never saw him smiling and he never expressed a sense of humor.

After my grandfather passed away, my uncle, my grandfather’s youngest son and the executor of his will, was clearing out a storage unit. My grandfather lived to be almost 90 years old and spent his last few years in a nursing home.

Well, my uncle found a box with those very old fashioned photo pictures of grandfather and Tilly. The pictures reveal a very happy and a very much in love couple with nothing but a GOOD future ahead of them. Grandfather was smiling and displaying an adorable sense of humor they wished they had seen while he was alive. My father and his siblings simply marveled over the pictures. They all wish they met that non- jaded man.

Now, they loved their father greatly. He was a highly educated and successfully wealthy man. They were always proud of him because my grandfather actually raised the children himself, except for Dotty. He always regretted not raising her, too. My grandmother was a younger and very spoiled woman. She actually shopped with a credit card before most people knew what one was. She also had no concept of the value of money.

My point to this comment is that Polio has a profound effect on its victims and their families. People’s lives are forever altered and some are truly shattered!!!